How to get rid of nightmares

Why do we get nightmares

Dreams aren't just random images or videos that pass through your mind but they are the thoughts of your subconscious mind encoded into symbols. While you are asleep your conscious mind becomes dormant but your subconscious mind stays active and starts thinking out loud.

The thoughts of your subconscious mind are converted into the symbols that you see in a dream. In my previous article How to have good dreams i explained how solving your major life problems can improve the quality of your dreams.

After all dreams and even nightmares might be your subconscious mind's own tools for drawing your attention towards an important unsolved problem.

However in this article i am going to talk about a different way of ending the nightmares you see which is controlling your dreams while you are asleep!

How to get rid of nightmares

Ever knew you were dreaming while having a certain dream?
If this ever happened to you i am sure you noticed you became much more able of controlling your dream. This is called lucid dreaming or the art of controlling your dreams.

By knowing how to force a lucid dream you will be able to control your dreams at night and get rid of nightmares. But the question is, how can you realize you are dreaming while you are asleep?

The main concept is doing a certain reality check so many times while you are awake so that your mind develops this habit and automatically transfers it to your dreams.

Here is a simple reality check: Push your palms against each other and see if your hands are gonna penetrate each other. Of course this is not going to happen while you are awake. Now if you kept doing that reality check each hour then you will eventually end up doing it in the dream.

After all the habits that you learn while you are awake usually get transferred to your dreams. If for example you had a dream where some bullies have beaten you up then learning martial arts will actually stop that dream as your new martial arts skills will be used in the next similar dream. (see also How to learn any skill)

This is also why i said in one of my previous articles that learning new skills will help you improve the quality of your dreams.

Choosing your reality check

You don't have to use the reality check i talked about above. You just need to find the one that appeals to you the most. Here are some examples of the popular reality checks people use:

Asking logical or math questions to yourself

Looking at your surroundings and asking yourself whether they are real or imagined

Trying to test the law of gravity by jumping up and watching what will happen

Writing something on your hands and checking whether its still there or not

Once you get comfortable with a certain reality check keep doing it while you are awake. Sooner or later you will find yourself doing it inside the dream and so you will realize that you are a sleep.

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